‘Trying’ - A Tonic for Today’s Times at Palm Beach Dramaworks

 

This exceptionally well-crafted two-handed dramedy, Trying by Joanna McClelland Glass, is the first revival Palm Beach Dramaworks ever has presented as it gears up for its 25^th anniversary next season. This new production brings the play’s emotional and humorous characteristics into sharp focus.

 

The plot is straightforward and is based mostly on fact when the playwright served as secretary in the late 1960’s to the retired statesman, Judge Francis Biddle, who was Roosevelt’s U.S. Attorney General and then the chief American judge at the Nuremberg war-crime trials.  This is not a literal documentary of their relationship, but one that is heightened by the playwright’s imagination, clearly showing two opposites, a well-read but plain spoken Canadian prairie girl Sarah Schorr, and the Ivy League educated patrician Biddle, during the last year of his life (a fact he does not allow to be in doubt).

 

The two acts encapsulate their negotiating a working relationship, one that begins abrasively and grows to trust and respect and even a kind of love.  It is the young and the exuberant vs. the aged and experienced.  When Sarah reassures Biddle that she “understands” something, Biddle dismissively comments: “No, I don’t think you can.  You’re at a disadvantage, in that I have been young, but you have never been old.”

 

William Hayes, PBD Producing Artistic Director, as well as the Director of this production, ably assisted by David A. Hyland, said “though it didn’t consciously dawn on me when I put together the 2023-24 season, in retrospect I believe I was drawn to Trying because it’s about something that seems to be a lost skill these days: the art of communication.”  Hayes’ directs this play with a soulfulness so fitting for his choice.

 

Dennis Creaghan and Kelly McCready Photo by Tim Stepien

Dennis Creaghan, the veteran of many PBD productions, portrays the superannuated Judge Francis Biddle, who is “trying” to keep up with his correspondence while writing a memoir, perpetually frustrated by a world that seems to be passing him by.  His nuanced performance reveals a vulnerability that gradually emerges from a gruff shell of stubbornness and insufferable crankiness.  Creaghan underscores his character’s impatience with the minor day to day foibles, such as those “tune-ups” with his wife who we never see but hear on his phone or his constant complaints about former secretaries.

 

There is a comic physicality to Creaghan’s performance that deeply connects with the audience.  He not only knows how to deliver a comic line effectively, but with just a look can evoke laughter when Sarah speaks.

 

His labored movements and stuttering breaths convey his declining health, his ascendance up the stairs growing more difficult, scene by scene.  He amusingly emphasizes Biddle’s displeasure with the decline of the English language (split infinitives are his bête noire) and the decline of civility over the years, and finally his deep concern about his legacy.  

 

The playwright’s alter ego, Sarah Schorr, is poignantly played by Kelly McCready making her PBD debut.  She instills a down to earth sincerity in her performance as she navigates the right balance of firmness and humor in dealing with such an irascible but august personage.  And it is with humor and resilience that Sarah works her way past the armor guarding his persona. 

 

Dennis Creaghan and Kelly McCready Photo by Tim Stepien

She also finally reveals a personal life and even solicits understanding and sympathy from Biddle.  They slowly change roles as Sarah is the one urging him on, to keep his nose to the grindstone of getting his tasks done as he slows down. (“Lace up your skates and get out on the ice!”).  Symbolically she takes over his desk finally, Biddle saying “Woe is me.  You’re a hard-hearted Hannah.  And may I say, now that you’ve taken control of my desk, you needn’t relish the victory quite so much….You should see yourself.  You look downright territorial,”  “Bosh and bunkum” is Sarah’s reply.

 

Hayes’ direction emphasizes McCready’s youthful eagerness, “a bugger for work” and her interplay with Creaghan’s resignation to seeing “the exit sign flashing; the door ajar.”  It is touching when they find common ground in the poetry of e.e. cummings.  But that does not end their squabbles as Biddle notes “Truly, I don’t always have to have the last word, but not only did cummings go to Harvard, St. Vincent Millay went to Vassar.”  Sarah replies “Sir, the schools they attended aren’t really relevant.  Literature can be taught.  Physics can be taught, talent can’t be taught” to which he replies “Touché, my dear, touché.”  The exchange of their favorite books towards the end of the play marks an intimacy of equals.

 

The play is a memorable diorama of a time and place of civility and seriousness of purpose so seemingly lacking in the contemporary world.  Hayes’ direction creates a cohesive, engaging production, wisely emphasizing the comic elements, the audience caught up in laughter.  He creatively focuses on the details between scenes, particularly the more lengthy ones that involve a costume change, to engage the audience with a simple spot on a bookshelf with a radio which briefly broadcasts news of the day, establishing time intervals.  This is conjoined to a lick of music of the era, a reminder that the outside world is still turning.

 

Scenic design by Bert Scott takes full advantage of the height of the PBD stage, displaying rafters above the stage, ones that would have been typical for a converted old horse stable.  The traditional stage setting is a welcome change from the increasing use of projections and other scenic technology.  It is breathtakingly inviting, the set seeming like a third character in such an intimate play.  Down stage right is more attention to details, signs of the fire which almost consumed the office.

 

And such attention certainly pertains to the period costumes produced by Brian O’Keefe the creative resident costume designer.  Many clothing changes are required by both Biddle and Sarah and O’Keefe coordinates the designs to the weather and the tone of the scene employing hats, sweaters, and overcoats while utilizing solid muted tones of fabric for the dresses and skirts worn by Sarah, appropriate suits and vests and bow ties for Biddle as well as fabricating a clever undergarment to show Sarah’s increasing pregnancy.

 

Lighting design by Addie Pawlick illuminates the windows to display the time of day and weather as well.  Snow can drift by the window or a blue sky.  Although the play takes place in one indoor space, Pawlick’s lighting captures the mood with various lamps scattered about the office as well as projecting warmth from the two floor space heaters.

 

 Sound design is by Roger Arnold bringing in the transitional music, the radio bulletins and the playback of the Dictaphone, which records a cathartic emotional conclusion.

 

Trying will be appreciated by all, so well acted, directed, moving, funny, tearful, truthful.  Palm Beach Dramaworks has laced its skates and produced a memorable revival.  Opening night was attended by the youthful eighty seven year old playwright, Joanna McClelland Glass, whose writing has stood the test of time, especially with this production.

 

‘Going All The Way’ Rings True

 

 

They grew the boys down on the farm the same sex starved way they did on the East Coast.  No wonder Willard (”Sonny”) Burns of Indianapolis is reminiscent of Portnoy and Holden Caulfield, as portrayed in Dan Wakefield’s 1970 novel, Going All the Way.  This is an unlikely read for me but I was led to it via a recent New York Times obituary of the author, by a NYT writer who had, himself, died three years earlier, David Stout. 

As Wakefield was 91 when he died and had no longer been writing, retiring to the community he came from in the environs of Indianapolis, and had stature as a writer of non-fiction, fiction, and as a magazine writer, this was one of those prepared obits waiting for its inevitable moment.  

 

I am now a regular reader of obits as I consider them to be an overlooked source of sometimes great writing (and Stout’s is among the best), reflecting on the lives of others who are about my age who were enveloped by the same times as mine.  More frequently there are ones of people I either knew or at least knew of. 

 

Also, my friend Ron is from Indiana and he has told me a lot about his childhood experiences.  Between those and reading this obituary, scenes of “Hoosiers” and the evocative music of Jerry Goldsmith drifted through my mind. 

 

Wakefield was like a Thomas Wolfe character in “You Can’t Go Home Again” as when he left Indianapolis, he felt he couldn’t return having written about his childhood memories and friends.  But he finally returned after becoming a very successful writer of both fiction and nonfiction.  His memoir Returning: A Spiritual Journey was highly praised, detailing his personal round trip journey from being a man of faith to becoming an atheist and then to humanism and spiritualism in his later years.

 

The obituary led me to what is considered to be his definitive work of fiction but I was really drawn by the concluding paragraph:

 

Asked to define his philosophy of life, Mr. Wakefield quoted Philo, the ancient philosopher of Alexandria, Egypt: “Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a great battle.” As for his life beyond writing, reading and reflecting, he said, “No golf, no horseshoes, no stamp-collecting, no hobbies.” And, he added, “No regrets.”

 

Amen to that.

 

Wakefield’s seminal novel Going All The Way (an amusingly lurid title), was published in 1970 and a movie was made from it in the 1990’s.  His novel was praised by another graduate of his high school, Kurt Vonnegut.  I have no idea how the novel and the film went under my radar at the time other than I still had my shoulder too much to the grindstone of work 

 

This would have appealed to me, and still does as the travails of its protagonist, Sonny, are painfully familiar.  I was the same timid boy in high school, wanting to fit in, but not considered to be part of the chosen cliques.  That was usually reserved for the jocks and the extraverts who also had their fair share of sex, if you believed them. 

 

The level of testosterone level ran high.  It is almost laughable in retrospect as to how much of our lives were consumed by trying to have sex.  And that is what Wakefield’s novel is about, Sunny trying to fit in, having his sexual fantasies fulfilled, and breaking loose from the hypocrisy of parental expectations.  

 

Returning from a stint in the service on the train in the early 1950s he has a chance meeting with another ex serviceman, one of the “chosen ones” in high school, Tom Casselman (“Gunner.”); you get the picture, a handsome popular boy, a jock. 

 

Sonny tries to act cool and is surprised that Gunner remembers him: “You were one of the quiet ones, you just sat back and observed. Watched us run around chasing our tails, a bunch of green asses. You were a detached observer.” Sonny shifted uneasily and took a gulp of beer. “Well sort of,” he said. The truth was he had been an unattached observer because he was never asked to be a participant. Now it was like he was getting credit for being something he had no other choice than to be. It was sort of weird….Denying the credit for having been something he couldn’t help being, Sonny realized it probably sounded like genuine modesty making him seem even more nobler.”… Gunner had this particular picture of him, and he liked the way that picture of himself looked.

 

It gradually becomes a coming-of-age buddy novel. Ironically, Sonny had a steady girlfriend who would have done anything for him sexually, but, oh no, he wanted what we all wanted at that age, the idealized, hard to get girl next door as pictured in popular culture and our favorite magazine Playboy, if you were fortunate enough to find your father’s stash, or successfully buy one at the corner store without being recognized.

 

As Sonny’s quiet presence with Gunner is mistakenly interpreted as his being profound, a notion he continues to do nothing to discourage, it culminates in Sonny having the opportunity to meet his ideal, set up by Gunner and his girlfriend, a blind double date in a parent’s empty house stocked with booze.  The latter renders Sonny unable to perform and this in turn leads to the kind of humiliation which Sonny (spoiler here) thinks about resolving with a razor blade and his wrist.

 

As a consequence, Gunner now feels an obligation to “fix” Sonny, which leads to an automobile accident (again, booze), minor injury to Gunner, but a major one to Sonny with a long recovery period during which Gunner sets out for NYC to find himself and reconnoiter for Sonny when he eventually emerges from the hospital and the cocoon of the mid-West.  Then life can begin as it so often does in the big Apple.  Mine did.  My wife’s did.  Wakefield’s did.  Add millions before and after.

 

It is a touching coming of age novel, funny, uncomfortably true, a young man making his way through the uncertainty about the future.  Page after page there were experiences I can relate to.  Dan Wakefield could have been a friend if I had met him.  And now I feel as if I did.